As one grows older it is impossible to not occasionally reflect on life and ask, “How did I get here?” I have been on this earth for a little over 70 years, and, I am convinced that, except for infancy, I have probably been an engineer for my entire life. I don’t think it is …
Automatic chemical addition and makeup is an attractive on feature on today’s sophisticated cleaning machines. Who wouldn’t appreciate eliminating the drudgery of taking samples, titrating, refractometer readings, or whatever and adding chemistry to a cleaning or rinsing bath manually? The trouble is that automatic chemical makeup is just not possible or applicable in all cases. Although there are …
In a recent blog, I touched on the fact that there is a limit to how long a cleaning solution will continue to produce clean parts as it becomes increasingly contaminated from use. Chemistry and disposing of spent chemistry are both expensive. Changing a bath usually results in a gap in production as the tank(s) …
When particles are the enemy, my general rule is filter, filter, filter! The cost of filtration is small compared to the overall benefit even if it is only “insurance.” There is, of course, the initial cost of installation (filter housings, pumps, plumbing, etc.) but the cost after that is going to be pretty much fixed provided …
A few years ago I wrote a post about the possible perils of automated valves. The thrust of the post was that many automated valves rely on significant line pressure to hold the valve tightly closed. In applications where there is only gravity pressure, as in drain lines for example, valves that are perfectly effective under high …
What happens when parts exit the cleaning process dirty? First of all, PANIC, especially in the case of critical cleaning for optics, semiconductor, disc drive and other industries where particles that can’t even be seen with a microscope render product worthless and unrecoverable! Then there is the inevitable quest for, “Why this is happening?” Although this scenario is …
The applications for wire seem limitless. Wire is used for electrical conductors as well as in structural applications including suspension bridges and other architectural creations. There are about 1 ½ miles of wire in a typical car today and often over 150 miles in a jetliner. A cruise ship? Somewhere around 3,000 miles! Wire diameters …
The cost of acquiring and disposing of cleaning chemistry is usually a major contributor to the overall cost of an industrial or precision cleaning process. Removing contaminants from cleaning solutions can potentially extend their useful life and reduce overall cleaning costs. Traditional filters including those of the bag and cartridge variety are commonly used to remove solid (particulate) contaminants …
I admit, I stole that title from my grandma Bertha. But even in this day, the concept is applicable. Cleaning one thing is one thing, cleaning thousands of things is another. Let’s think about that. Cleaning, as we have discussed before, really amounts to moving contaminants from the surfaces being cleaned and sequestering them in another …
In the blog The Effect of Temperature on Ultrasonics, temperature was identified as a major variable in ultrasonic cleaning due to the impact it has on many physical properties of liquids. This blog addresses the effect that chemistry has on the physical properties of liquids and the resulting effect on ultrasonics. Most ultrasonic cleaning utilizes chemistry …
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